Archive for year: 2017

On December 24th, FreeFly Systems (www.freeflysystems.com) delivered our brand new MoVI Pro. We pre-ordered this new piece of gear from them a couple months back when it was first announced and waited with anticipation until it arrived. For those of you not familiar with the MoVI Pro, here are the specs according to the FreeFly website:

MōVI Pro – Digital 3-Axis Camera Stabilizer

MōVI Pro is the most advanced camera movement system ever created. It offers industry leading performance, flexibility, and ease of use. MōVI Pro is a lightweight, portable system that allows users to create world class production quality video content quickly and easily.

Now that we have our MoVI Pro it was time to start putting it to the test to see how good it really was! We have a MoVI M10 which we loved but there were always limitations with it that we wished we could overcome. The new MoVI Pro so-far has overcome these limitations. Here are some of the tests we have conducted already.

There seemed to be a good amount of people looking for a test to see how well the pan motor was holding at higher gimbal weights, I decided to conduct this test.

Below are pictures of the camera package and gimbal weights.

Camera setup was 13lbs and the total gimbal weight was about 21-22lbs

Camera Package Weight

Total Gimbal Weight

Gimbal

Batteries were low during this test.

MoVI Pro Settings

MoVI Pro Settings

Camera was a Red Epic MX with Contax Zeiss 100mm Macro (my heaviest lens). I attached a Switronix battery to the back to add extra weight.

The MoVI Batteries were down at 35-40%. I didn’t want to use a full battery just in-case the overall voltage affects the holding power.

Here are the settings used for the test. These were based on the auto-tune @ 75% but then tweaked by me a bit.

I did 4 runs sitting on the side of a pickup truck (safety 3rd). 2 runs were conducted at 40mph (18ms/s) and 2 at 50mph (22m/s).

The result? It didn’t even phase the MoVI. Held rock steady the entire time. The 100mm lens at 4K on the epic is equivalent to 174mm and it’s completely usable footage. The jerky movements up and down were me, not the gimbal loosing it. I didn’t adjust the Majestic setting for tilt for 100mm operator so it was sensitive.

Another test we wanted to try out was flying with a telephoto-lens under our drones. We conducted this test using the same lens as the above test which is 100mm. We are flying a RED Epic with a Contax Zeiss 100mm lens at 4k under our ALTA 6. Due to the crop factor of the EPIC at 4k this is a focal length equivalent to 174mm. There is no post stabilization added to this footage. This was also the longest lens we have ever flown and the first time our camera operator has tried this which is why the moves are a bit all over the place at first. We also will absolutely need a wireless follow focus system when we do this again.